Pensthorpe in the Rain

I had Pensthorpe completely to myself in the morning as it was raining and very chilly. The rain eased off over lunch so a few souls braved the reserve but by 3 pm heavy rain set in. I managed the iconic Bearded tit picture. The Lapwings show beautiful colours in dull light while the Long-tailed tit looked a bit bedraggled. The Falcated (?) Teal reveals the quality of Bryan's lens and it also makes flying bird photography possible in the low woodland light.

Lakenheath RSPB Reserve

Called in at Lakenheath on my way to lecture at Norwich. Bryan had kindly lent me his 300 2.8 lens. Unfortunately it rained for a while when I arrived and the light level remained very low. I liked the dynamic pose of the Great Tit and the Coots were in full aggressive mood. There were several Marsh Harriers around but all too distant so I decided to photograph just the reeds!

Finished Screen Print

This was the last week of my screen printing course and I am relatively happy with my final print although there are several improvements that I could have made.The misalignment of the three screens (mainly because the paper edges were not square has resulted in white edges on the trunk and movement in the branches both of which I like. The main problem is the overlapping of the colours at the edges of the images; this will make mounting a bit difficult as I would have liked to have left white round the print but may have to bring the mount right in.

Trying SilverFX

I have been trying out Silver FX, produced by Nik software, which is a very easy to use monochrome converter. I am very pleased with these pictures of Sadie.

Night Photography with IR

A couple of images taken with the IR camera. The first from our lane, which has no lighting and so gives a very evenly lit image except for the light spilling out from the back windows.
The second one is from the Travelodge window in Basildon - there appear to be a couple of UFO over the Liquid night club!

Sculptures from Chippenham Park

Chippenham Park

This was our first but certainly not last visit to Chippenham Park to see their snowdrop display. Extensive gardens with a lot of interesting statues (subject for next blog). These were mainly taken with 100mm macro lens but the final one, which is my favourite, was with the 24mm TS lens.

More on the screen printing

Again a couple of weeks has passed on the screen printing, so I am recording details of the various stages to help future attemps.

The screen is attached to a small printing set up (the paper on the underside of the screen was only needed as this screen extended further than the other two separations). When the screen is lowered, it activates a vacuum pump that ensures contact between screen and paper during printing. The area of the vacuum bed that is not cover by the screen print is masked off with newsprint. Registration marks are placed on the bed so that each piece of paper is identically placed (nb make sure paper has exact corners). The first separation is then printed - I chose a transparent mid blue for the first screen. The ink is dragged across the screen by pulling the squeegee at 45 degrees to the screen. The screen is lifted and then the print area is flooded with ink by pushing the squeegee back.

To print the subsequent screens, it is necessary to align the registration marks correctly. To do this, tape down a piece of clean film over one of the orginal prints and print onto this. Then move paper around under the acetate till it is exactly in register and place the registration marks. Remove acetate.

I printed the second screen first all over with a transparent dark blue. Some work was then done with the blue filler to cover the nearest tree trunks and branches and with bleach to open up the sky ares. I then chose a transparent very diluted black (using 1 to 5 parts of black to extender) for the sky area (masked off the trees) and a more opaque grey (diluted white with extender) for the back trees and tops of branches.

All it needs now is the third (black separation) screen.

Wicken Fen

Despite the rain, we decided to go on our planned outing to Wicken Fen. There weren't many birds around - this rather sad-looking collered dove in the rain was about the best bird photo of the day but the sun came out later with great opportunities for abstracts, backlit reeds and a dramatic sunset.

Catkin time

The Hazel catkins are in full 'bloom' with the small red female flowers still visible. The Alder female flowers are miniature versions of the old dry cones.
The Hazel bush by the brook in Toft is covered in catkins every year and glows golden. I tried a slow shutterspeed as the catkins blew in the wind.

Near Collision

Five frames showing a close shave as two surfers nearly collided. I like the last one best in many ways but the hand is over the face.

Bournemouth on a Windy Day

The wind was force 7 or 8 today - much to the delight of the surfers.
It also resulted in two North American birds turning up in Poole Harbour- a Ring-billed Gull and a Long-billed Dowitcher